From the Archives: The Octopus

From the archives: as we head into 2024, we are featuring some of our magazine’s earliest publications. This piece was originally published in issue number four.

I have an inkling my ambiguity

is a sink of deep meaning

I don’t need to speak. 

Power in silence, receding 

organelle said into sleek 

neurotic strangle at the 

coral riptide.

Questionable bulb. 

I am no colour necessarily.

My camouflage amplified quiet. 

Three hearts, nine brains, no skeleton

a soft body, ambulatory boundary 

between my sea and the deep brain

to tap information

from the coral root:

there is no telling. 

Children? I am singular, 

Unfamiliar, spawndark

mob of myself

with the mind off

immutably, an original nine

late, wondering why,

in a tongue not spoken.